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Wednesday, 20 March 2013

Breast is Best

These children will naturally learn the purpose of breasts as being for feeding the baby

As Hong Kong restricts the purchase of baby formula by visitors, many new mothers in China are turning to breastfeeding.
WHEN
the Hong Kong authorities decided to restrict the amount of baby
formula (two cans or about 1.8kg) that visitors can take out of the
city, that regulation sent ripples of indignation throughout the Chinese
mainland, and many cried foul, and even more said the new rule was
merciless.

The outcry is the result of a long chain of events,
which started after melamine was found in milk powder produced on the
mainland. This safety scandal made parents look abroad for safer infant
formula for their babies, and Hong Kong became an important source.

Scores
of buyers cleared the shelves in Hong Kong, resulting in a flood of
protests from Hong Kong parents, who had suddenly found their milk
supplies drying up.

One of the better side effects of this
confidence crisis is that more new mothers in China are choosing to
breastfeed their babies.

“Nothing is better than mother’s milk,”
says Liu Zhaoqiu, a children’s healthcare specialist with the No.1
Hospital of Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Breast milk is rich
in antibodies and nutrients, and provides the child with a head start in
health, growth and development. Breastfeeding also strengthens the bond
between mother and child, which is good for the children’s
psychological development, Liu underlines.

Excluding unusual
cases, such as mothers with infectious diseases and severe heart
disease, Liu recommends breastfeeding for the first six months, after
which mother’s milk should be complemented with other foods up to two
years and later.

“I breastfeed my daughter, and I’m confident
that breastfeeding is the best and safest food for her,” says Yang Yang,
38, a mother of a nine-month-old girl in Beijing. She is a consultant
who works from home and did not realise the benefits of breastfeeding at
first.

After her baby was born, she fed the infant with an imported baby formula that was sent to her by relatives living abroad.

Later, after she and her husband found out that breastfeeding was better than any formula, she made the switch.

“Parents
always want to give their children the best,” Yang says. “Since we know
breast milk is better than formula, there is no reason not to
breastfeed.”

She feels fortunate that her hours at work are
flexible, and she has a lot of time to stay home with her daughter. Her
daughter is healthier and stronger than many other infants she knows,
Yang says.

Currently, there are many breastfeeding support groups online, Yang says, which new mothers can go to for advice.

Han
Tongyan, a paediatric healthcare specialist with the No.3 Hospital of
Peking University, has noticed the changes in attitude towards
breastfeeding.

Han became a paediatrician in 1998. At that time,
infant formula was new to the Chinese, and many scrimped and saved to
buy formula for their children, because they thought it was better than
breast milk.

After safety scandals repeatedly hit both local and
imported foreign sources of milk powder in 2008, many parents were
forced to reconsider the situation. Some changed tack and got friends
and relatives abroad to start a supply chain. Others used online
resources to bring in the imported milk powder.

And they also
became more aware that nothing is safer, or better, for the child than
mother’s milk – a message that has been promoted through government
campaigns and better support groups online, Han observes.

“Quite a
few mothers I know quit their jobs so they can breastfeed their
children better. This would have been unimaginable in the past,” Han
says.

Liu Qidi, 27, a mother to an eight-month-old boy in Wuhan, Hubei province, manages to breastfeed her boy against all odds.

During
the first two months after a caesarian delivery, she did not produce
enough breast milk, and had to resort to supplemented feeding. In spite
of the difficulty, she resisted pressure from her mother-in-law, who
tried to persuade her to use infant formula.

When her child was
two months old, Liu was finally able to feed him exclusively on breast
milk. She also resigned from her job as operation director assistant in a
large international company, so she could breastfeed her son
undistracted.

“It was a hard choice. But nothing is more
important than my son,” Liu says. “The job kept me too busy and there
was a lot of overtime. If I worked, I couldn’t have continued to
breastfeed my son.”

Liu now works at her mother’s cosmetics distributing company, and is able to nurse her child anytime she wishes.

But not every breastfeeding mother has that luxury.

One
of Liu’s cousins, for instance, has to continue working even while
breastfeeding. As a result of the pressure from work, the mother could
not produce enough milk and has to buy milk formula from abroad.

“For
babies under four months, they can only survive on milk. If mother’s
milk is not available, then milk formula is next best,” says Liu
Zhaoqiu, the healthcare specialist.

At the bottom line, parents
suffer such concern about their babies’ diet because they need to have
the confidence that what they feed their children is safe and
uncontaminated.

As Liu sums up, “the authorities must adopt
efficient quality control measures to make sure formula in the market is
safe. This will re-establish confidence”.

Perhaps then, parents would not have to risk breaking the law by buying milk from Hong Kong.